I’ve seen this work around town, popping up in the collectable graphic ephemera produced by the amazing Walker Art Center. What I like about Chad’s work is that he understands the skeletons of typefaces as a anthropologist would a fossilized mammal.

Environmental and elemental art — large-scale and sky art — kinetic and technological art — random happenings and programmed events — multimedia and light shows: ZERO 1, 2, 3 documents the birth, more than ten years ago, of these new tendencies in international art. It collects in one volume the three publications created by the artists’ collaborative, Group Zero, between 1958 and 1961.

He contrasted African time to European time and also to Asian time. He said that in the 19th century, mankind had come to terms with space, and that the great question of the 20th was the coexistence of the different concepts of time.

I don’t encounter very much Japanese design on the web, especially design from the early 20th century. So much of Japan seems hidden. That being said, here’s an amazing collection of book and magazine covers from that era.